Manifesto For Walloon Culture - Walloon Language, Regional Varieties of French and Walloon Culture

Walloon Language, Regional Varieties of French and Walloon Culture

The Flemish Journalist Guido Fonteyn described it as a Walloon awakening.

For Dimitrios Karmis and Alain Gagnon, on the road to cultural self-assertion this manifesto has marked a powerful moment.

For Emmanuelle Labeau, the Arthur Masson's novels before the period of the Manifesto (Masson died in 1970), are located in Wallonia,

not only a provincial region, it is also a different country from one that possesses linguistic legitimacy : France. It is worth noting that a positive image -relying on affective and non linguistic qualities – is given of this peripheral region. On the other hand, the novels are intended to obtain literary recognition by exploiting the exoticism of this milieu In his writings, Masson manages to convey the ambivalent attitude of educated Francophone Belgium: regional varieties of French are felt to have positive affective features but lack sophistication. By dividing his writings between two areas – his character's language which unshamefully uses regional features and his own language, which aims at neutrality – Masson tried to resolve the tensions of a national linguistic inferiority complex.

The regional varieties of French are not necessarily the Walloon dialect but Philip Mosley wrote:

Walloon dialect has carried neither official status as a language in administrative, ecclesiastical, or political affairs, nor sufficient weight to act as a popular and influential vehicle for the expression of Walloon cultural identity. This latter task has fallend instead in the last thirty years to politically conscious writers in French who published for instance a Manifesto for Walloon culture

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